


schism

by ignitesthestars



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, F/M, Heavy Angst, Romance, Tragic Romance, the prompt was 'die by your hand okay'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 05:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10915695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: “He’s - not the same, Annabeth.”Of course he’s not, she wants to snap. A man didn’t diminish the gods without experiencing a few changes in personality, but it’s more than that. Before the schism, before this latest round of death and dying, he hadn’t been the same. Tartarus had changed him.It had changed them both.





	schism

_He concentrated so hard that something inside him cracked._ \- pg. 362, House of Hades

-

Annabeth doesn’t have special powers. She has a hat that can be stripped of its magic if she fights with her mom, weapons that can be lost or broken or taken from her, and a body that, while honed to peak condition after years of training, is still just a mortal body.

But when her back is to the wall, when it seems like there’s no way out, when she’s been stripped of supplies and her enemy is convinced that they’ve won, she has her mind.

_“I’m starting to think that Luke was right.”_

Even that’s beginning to betray her, lately.

-

In dreams, they’re curled up in bed together. Sunlight filters thinly through the net curtains, casting them in a hazy glow that whites out the rest of the New Rome apartment they’ve taken over. Somewhere out in the real world there are classes waiting for them, people and responsibilities, but even in dreams Annabeth can see the strain of nightmares etched into their faces.

His or hers, it doesn’t matter. They share them more often than not these days. Annabeth rests her head on his chest, listening to the unsteady thrum of his heart. A sun-browned arm curls possessively around her waist, like if he can just keep her close enough he can protect her from the world and its monsters.

She tangles her fingers in the hem of his shirt, playing with loose threads, trying not to think. But Annabeth always has her mind, and even in dreams her thoughts tick over, chasing each other in circles.

_The Council has refused your petition to build on Camp Halfblood._

_(Nine campers have disappeared in the past three months.)_

_They didn't tell me why, but if I had to guess? A lot has changed recently, Annabeth._

_(Questers have been sent out. It's best if you don't get involved)._

_We are dealing with people who haven't changed in millennia._

_(They've noticed that things tend to...escalate when you and Percy are dealing with situations)._

_The time may have come for patience._

_(Stay out of this one, okay?)_

Percy’s thumb slides over the bare skin of her hip, the whisper of a touch. In another dream it's alluring, the distraction she craves. In this one, she’s the touchstone he needs. _I’m here, I’m here, we’re real, I’m here._ She can’t remember which one of them had been screaming that night.

She shifts her head, gaze trailing up the hard line of his jaw, over the whatever-o’clock shadow grazing his cheek to his eyes. In certain lights they seem greener, speaking of something more dangerous than the sea.

(The worst nightmares are memories. She wakes up choking, some days).

“Hey.” His voice is rough with sleep and something else, but he manages a smile for her. This much is real, and it breaks her fucking heart. “You’ve got your thinking face on.”

“All my faces are thinking faces, Seaweed Brain.”

In the dream, they laugh. It cuts off too soon, but it does happen. 

_We’re not supposed to be here._

In the dream, she reaches up, slides her fingers over his face, cups the back of his neck. 

_We’re making the most of it, okay, Percy? We’re going to figure this out._

In the dream, he turns his head, gives the palm of her hand a distracted kiss. They stay like that, breathless, as he fights not to spit out the thing sitting in the back of his throat.

_I’m starting to think that Luke was right._

She talks him down. They stay in bed for the rest of the day, and when night comes they sleep right through.

-

Annabeth is the only one who can get the elevator to work.

This might have something to do with the fact that no one else can get close enough. Minor godlings guard the way, and demigods whose specialty is killing other demigods if they get in the way. Monsters lurk in the shadows of New York streets abandoned by mortals, and none of them touch her as she makes her way to the Empire State Building.

Nico leans against the doors. He's shot up in the last couple of years. He'd been all legs and arms the last time she'd seen him, but he's settled into his limbs since then. Annabeth has known him since he was high pitched and puny, but even she feels that spark of danger as he unfolds himself from the entrance to Olympus. There’s no weapon in his hands, but the son of Hades doesn’t need one.

She raises an eyebrow at him, one hand on her sword. “Is this supposed to be symbolic?”

“Welcoming, I think.” He blows a lock of too-long fringe out of his face. “You’re not really the parade type.”

Her heart rockets up to her throat. “I’m expected, then.”

“You weren’t exactly sneaking through the city.” A pause. “He’s - not the same, Annabeth.”

 _Of course he’s not_ , she wants to snap. A man didn’t diminish the gods without experiencing a few changes in personality, but it’s more than that. Before the schism, before this latest round of death and dying, he hadn’t been the same. Tartarus had changed him.

It had changed them both. She swallows the poison down, giving Nico a crooked smile stripped of anything resembling humour.

“None of us are.”

There’s a glint in Nico’s eyes that she can’t place. Exhilaration, or exhaustion? His motives for joining this crusade had never been clear to her, and in the quiet of the aftermath, it’s impossible to tell how he feels about success. He rubs the back of his neck, glancing past her shoulder like he expects someone else to be standing there, and she realises abruptly that it’s not the first time he’s done that in their short conversation.

What a fucking situation they’ve all gotten themselves into.

“Yeah, guess I can’t argue with that,” he mumbles. “You should probably head up. I don’t think anyone wants him coming down to find out what’s keeping you right now.”

A frisson of foreboding works down her spine, chased by a sharper spasm of agony. Annabeth doesn’t trust herself to speak so she doesn’t bother trying, stepping past Nico towards the elevators. The doors start to hiss shut when his arm flies out, stopping them in their tracks.

“Have you seen--?”

“Find him yourself,” and this time she does snap, too full of emotion to try and control any of it. “We’re not at war with each other, Nico.”

His mouth works for a second, until she gives a pointed look at his arm. He withdraws, and so does his expression. By the time the doors shut, he might as well be a statue.

Annabeth’s head thunks back against the elevator walls. She squeezes her eyes shut, and the tiny box sweeps her up towards Olympus.

-

“Stop…” she pleads, her voice thick with terror. 

Before Tartarus, Annabeth would have said that nothing could have made her afraid of the boy in front of her. That the world could try, and that the world would dash itself to pieces in the attempt.

But before Tartarus she never could have conceived of the look of cruelty that sweeps over his features now. They’ve all killed, all done terrible things for the necessity of it, but neither of them have taken _pleasure_ in it.

(except she remembers the fire and triumph in his eyes after killing Arachne, and the part of her that’s always thinking has to wonder how long this has been coming)

“Percy, please…”

She should scream. Should demand he stop, tell him how wrong this is, but there’s a light of joy in his eyes that she doesn’t recognise, that makes her afraid to push too hard in case she shoves him in the wrong direction. 

Akhlys chokes on her own tears, surrounded by her own poison. _Poetic,_ some corner of her brain notes dryly, even as anguish holds her captive. He glances over at her, confusion displacing that cruel joy, and for a brief second she thinks she’s gotten through to him.

“I’m tired, Annabeth,” he whispers.

Akhlys dies quietly. Hard to scream, when your lungs are filled with water.

-

This is not the first time she has walked through a wrecked and ruined Olympus. This time comes with several key differences, though.

It’s her work. Marble columns dashed to pieces, statues and fountains toppled, gardens drained of life - they’re all _hers_. Her skill, her knowledge, her effort. The product of years reduced to nothing. 

She stares at the destruction, fingers curling into fists. Her nails are blunt, but they hurt carving into the meat of her palm anyway. It takes her a couple of dizzying seconds before she can breathe properly again, surveying the destruction.

The other difference is that she is by herself, and she’s not chasing anything. There’s no hurried rush to get to the throne room before the promise of disaster becomes reality, and no pounding of feet and hearts beside her to push her forward. There is Annabeth, and only Annabeth.

She closes her eyes, sucks in a quick gasp of oxygen, and pushes forward. There’s a heaviness in the air, the tang of ozone, a deathly silence.

She walks.

-

He starts looking for things to kill.

No, that’s - it’s not entirely true. It would be easy to blame everything on that one moment in Tartarus, say it was the point of no return and wash her hands of anything resembling responsibility.

But _they_ start looking for things to kill.

Annabeth doesn’t even have a reason, not really. She knows what drives Percy, who wants something better for all of them, who wants to protect demigods from the early death that has been accepted as par for the course for so long.

But for her - the cruel pleasure on his face haunts her nightmares, and it’s not gone now that they tell each other Tartarus is behind them. So she kills monsters with him, hunts them down in their nests, slaughters them mercilessly because--

Because if she keeps his focus on monsters, maybe it won’t turn elsewhere.

Because there’s a seed of anger and hate in her own chest after what’s been done to them, and if she takes it out on monsters, maybe it won’t turn elsewhere.

Because she’s sent more of her life fighting than not, and she doesn’t know how to stop.

( _I’m worried about you_ , Piper says. And then--

 _I miss you._ And then--

 _Come back to us. It doesn’t matter how_ )

She does try. They both do, through the haze of violence and worse miring them both. That had been what the petition to expand Camp Halfblood was for. A chance to start over, to throw all of their excess energy into doing something good for their world and maybe clawing back something like hope for themselves.

But the petition had been rejected, and the nine dead demigods were revealed to have been killed by...negligence. _Bad luck_ , the gods called it, as though they didn’t make impossible demands of their children, as though they didn’t throw them at tasks without preparation, as though they didn’t break their promises left right and centre.

_“I’m starting to think that Luke was right.”_

She should have stopped it then. Worse things have been said in the wake of that morning during their polite banishment from Camp, far worse things have been done, but hindsight is 20/20, and Annabeth can draw a straight line from New Rome to the ruins of Olympus.

-

The sky is thick with the promise of a storm, but there’s no sudden downfall as Annabeth makes her way to the throne room, no rumble of thunder. The entire world seems to be held in abeyance, waiting for what happens next.

She can relate.

 _Stop_ , her body screams, as her sneakers squeak onto the stone of the Hall of the Gods. _Turn back. You’re better than this. There’s another way, you know there is._

It’s dark. She remembers the hall being bathed in light - flickering torches, or pooling sunlight, or whatever else a god could command to provide illumination. Hestia’s hearth in the middle of it all. Now though, the entire room is cast in grey - except for a crackling white at the other end.

She walks, casting her gaze in any direction except straight ahead. Her stomach flips over, stretches itself inside out as she takes in the state of the place. Annabeth had known what she would find here, had braced herself from the moment the rainbow had broken over Camp shrieking _Olympus has fallen_. But knowing and seeing are two entirely different things, and the reality of the broken thrones is a horror and a blessing all at once.

 _It’s over_ , she thinks. Stops, corrects herself. _It’s almost over_.

She looks forward.

He stands wreathed in lightning before what remains of Zeus’ rainbow throne. Even cracked as it is, it towers over him as the lightning crackles over his skin, dances through his fingers, circles his head in the mockery of a crown. His back is to her, but she can see him holding something in his hands, the edges of it still familiar after all these years.

 _Maybe that’s where it started_. Maybe they were always going to end up here, from the moment they got dragged into divine affairs.

It’s not Zeus’ throne he’s staring at, or any of the others. No; his head turns towards the corner of the room, where the shattered remains of a house-sized aquarium litter the floor. No blood, or ichor. In fact, the entire hall is disturbingly clean, except for the last vestiges of Olympian power.

“Percy,” she says softly, her voice barely audible over the crack of lightning. “Turn around.”

-

 _“There’s a way. Kronos tried it in the war. But I don’t - we can’t._ You _can’t.”_

_“Kronos tried a lot of things during the war. But you mean - oh.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“...So we find another way. That’s what we’re good at, right?”_

_“Right.”_

-

The lightning stops like it had never been there, and the resulting silence is deafening. Terror shudders through Annabeth’s body as the doubts she’s kept at bay since she snuck out of Camp threaten to overwhelm her, but then he’s turning and it’s Percy, oh gods, it’s _Percy._

She doesn’t know which one of them moves first. She _does_ know that her hand comes off her drakonbone sword, that the Master Bolt clatters to the ground. That her name is rough on his lips and she foregoes words entirely, a low cry ripping itself from her chest.

And then his arms are around her and she’s burying her face in his shoulder, clinging to him like he’s the only thing in the world keeping her upright. The scent of ozone burns higher around him, forces its way up her nostrils, but she doesn’t let go. His hand cups the back of her head, tangled in her curls, the other tight around her waist.

“You’re here,” he whispers. “You’re real, you’re really here.”

“I shouldn’t have left.” She’s been holding back tears for months, but the floodgates are open now and she sobs into his shift. The spectre of Akhlys hovers in the back of her mind, choking to death. “You needed me and I left, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey.” He tugs lightly on her hair, pulling her head back so he can look at her. Poison green eyes drink in the sight of her, tracking every change and familiarity in her features. “It’s okay. You’re here now, and we can fix this together. We’ll make it right.”

Each breath is bitter in her throat. The air snakes through her body, turns her stomach. Her gorge rises, but she forces words out around it anyway. Forces strength into her legs, forces a hand up to cup his jaw, smooth a thumb over his cheek.

“Fix what?” she asks, even though she knows what he means, knows what he wants to do. That knowledge is the whole reason she’s here at all, not seeing to the defenses of Camp. “Percy, you did it. It’s done. You can stop now.”

A hideous rage flashes across his features before horror chases it away. He lets go of her, stepping back, shaking his head, apologies tumbling over his lips.

“Shh.” She fists a hand into his shirt, pulling him back to her. This time, it’s his head that bends into her, pressing against her chest. She strokes his hair like she used to after a nightmare , like all of this can just disappear with a couple of soothing touches. “It’s okay. I know you’re angry, but I’ve always been safe around you. We both know that.”

She presses her lips to the top of his head. Her hand moves down, soothing his back now.

“I’m not angry at you,” he mumbles. “I’m angry that it’s not done. All this pain, all this effort, and they’re not even dead.”

The tears come thick and fast. Annabeth focuses on her words on making them come out, once after another. “What happens to the world if you kill them properly, Percy?”

“We make a new one. A fair one.”

“With you at the head?”

 _Say no_ , she begs. _Say no, please_. 

He would have, even after they’d started down this path. _No way_ , he would have said, rolling his eyes. _Can you imagine me trying to rule the world? I’d probably misplace something important in the first three days. Like the moon._

Percy looks up at her then. There’s anguish in his face, and love, and something worse than both. A rock solid certainty.

“Yes.”

She nods. She squeezes her eyes shut, and nods, and kisses him. It’s desperate and familiar and he doesn’t hesitate to kiss her back, pulling her close again, holding her like she’s the most precious thing in existence.

It makes it easy to pull her dagger out without him noticing.

It makes it easy to stab him, the Celestial Bronze sliding between his ribs and into his heart with no resistance at all.

-

“Hey.” His voice is rough with sleep and something else, but he manages a smile for her. This much is real, and it breaks her fucking heart. “You’ve got your thinking face on.”

“All my faces are thinking faces, Seaweed Brain.”

It’s supposed to make him laugh, but it doesn’t even win a snort. The smile is gone, replaced by a furrow between his brows. “Tell me,” he says. “I might be able to help.”

Annabeth opens her mouth. Stops. Everything in her screams to keep this inside, to not tempt fate by making the words real, but Percy looks at her with such concern and - and it’s eating her up inside. This feeling, the regret and fear chewing away at her heart. She’s scared of what happens to her if she sits on this, if she lets it fester in silence.

She sucks in a shuddering breath, lowers her eyes. It’s easier to say, if she’s not looking at him.

“I’m...starting to think that Luke was right.”

It’s her voice. They’re her words.

(her worst nightmares are memories).


End file.
